Jazz vocalist Lena Seikaly, along with her duo of DC's top musicians, perform well-loved songs from the seasonal repertoire. Her group will play selections from Irving Berlin and Cole Porter to "A Charlie Brown Christmas," and Seikaly's swinging arrangements -- some originally crafted, and some inspired by legendary recordings of singers Ella Fitzgerald, Betty Carter, and Bing Crosby -- will be sure to get you dancing in your seat and feeling the holiday spirit.

Named “one of Washington’s preeminent jazz singers" and "brightest voices in jazz” (The Washington Post), as well as a “major league young talent in jazz” (Duke Ellington’s biographer, Dr. John Hasse), Lena is making her mark in national and international jazz circles as a revivalist of traditional jazz vocals, as well as an innovator in contemporary vocal jazz styles. She was one of eleven semi-finalists for the prestigious 2015 Thelonious Monk Institute International Jazz Vocals Competition in L.A., is an alum of the Betty Carter Jazz Ahead program in DC, the Jazz Aspen Snowmass program directed by Christian McBride, and the Strathmore Artist-in-Residence program in Maryland. Both as a bandleader and featured artist, Lena has headlined at Jazz at Lincoln Center Shanghai (China), the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Strathmore Music Center, Blues Alley, the Hamilton, West Virginia Public Radio’s Mountain Stage, Sidney Harman Hall, various Smithsonian venues and DC’s famed Westminster Church, as well as the Elkhart Jazz Festival (Elkhart, IN), Mel Bay Jazz Festival (St. Louis, MO), Chestertown Jazz Festival (Chestertown, MD), D.C. Jazz Festival (Washington, DC), and Center City Jazz Festival (Philadelphia, PA). She has performed with Byron Stripling, Norman Simmons, Michael Feinstein, the Columbus Jazz Orchestra, Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, U.S. Army Blues, Capitol Bones Big Band, and Bohemian Caverns Jazz Orchestra. Lena has released four albums under her name between 2009 and 2018, all of which were released at Blues Alley. Her music can be heard regularly on DC’s jazz station WPFW 89.3, and her 2018 album “A Little Closer” was featured on Washington DC’s NPR station, WAMU 88.5 shortly after its release.